


Statesboro Blues

by therev



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-13
Updated: 2009-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-02 08:17:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therev/pseuds/therev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys handle a few jobs in Georgia. Classic travelfic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Statesboro Blues

Outside of Statesboro they corner a clawed thing they can’t name, so they shower it with bullets, silver and iron both, the noise near deafening in the abandoned machine shop it calls home. When it can do nothing more than kick itself in bloody circles on the ground, Dean douses it with gasoline and they watch it burn for a while. The smell stays in their clothes until two counties over they finally stop and find a motel and Dean buys them new shirts from a feed store, the only place in town that sells clothing. He pays for them with hustled money, along with some bandaging and surgical scrub. Later, Sam questions the words FOR VETERINARY USE ONLY on the bottle and Dean says it’s all the same and anyway no one looks at you strange for buying surgical scrub from a feed store, even if you look like you’ve been wrestling a bear, which he practically had been. Then Sam shuts his mouth until he opens it again to curse Dean and Dean, while stitching a five-inch gash in Sam’s shoulder, calls him a pussy.

Outside, a half dozen motorcycles rumble past on the road, southbound. Dean watches Sam watch them through the window, curtains open wide to let in the sun.  
______

Sam was exactly sixteen and three days when he got his driver license, and exactly sixteen and seven days when he bought a motorcycle from a friend of Bobby’s even though Bobby told him not to because it was a piece of shit. Dean still doesn't know where he got the money.

It was a piece of shit but Dean kept it running. He would bitch about the effort and time wasted even though Sam had never asked him to do it. It surprised Dean how natural the kid looked on the bike, and happy. It would ride two but Dean resisted Sam’s urging, determined not to be caught riding bitch. He gave in after a while, tucked up behind his little brother at sixty miles per hour. That was when Dean realized that Sam would outgrow him.

Dean suspected that Sam liked the bike for its promise of independence. He also supposed that Sam probably found it less satisfying for not having a home to run away from.

By the time their dad picked them up a few months later, the bike had stopped running for good. Dean probably could have fixed it.

It’s probably still in Bobby’s yard somewhere.  
____

There’s an empty house in Folkston. They almost can’t find it for the overgrowth. Sam fords through the brush, shotgun in hand, and Dean follows almost leisurely. The heat makes him that way. The steps are missing so they swing up onto the porch, a pony saddle rots in the half sun on the railing. Everything’s rotting except for the weeds and the galvanized porch roof which is nearly pristine.

There's nothing alive or dead in the house except for the bees. They’re in the walls so the buzz is dull and indistinct and he can’t blame people for thinking it’s haunted. Part of the roof is missing and from the doorway of a back room they watch black specks move in and out of the southern summer sun. Neither of them is willing to get any closer. Dean steps back and almost falls through the floor but Sam catches him by the arm, hauls him up to stand beside him, steadies him. The deaths here weren’t caused by anything supernatural except maybe the sometimes uncanny powers of human stupidity.

There’s a windmill behind the house, and a pond, long and shaded. They sit on the bank and watch fat catfish sliding through the murk until the sun is less brutal. Dean says he used to dream about places like this, then he says it’s time to get something to eat.  
_____

Somewhere around midnight they get caught by a train and the Impala rumbles impatiently as the train passes in its headlights. Each car looks the same but for the color and graffiti. Sam tries to read some of it, knows better than to count. Dean’s leaning back in the driver’s seat, half asleep.

“Want me to drive?” Sam asks, yawns.

“Nope,” Dean says, eyes still closed, “but I want more than anything for there to be a motel on the other side of this ass draggin’ train, and I got a feeling I’m gonna be disappointed.”

Sam makes a noise of agreement, then, “You ever jump trains?”

“Couple of times,” Dean says, “I don’t really recommend it. Not as glamorous as they make it out. ”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“I don’t know.”

“End,” Sam says, reaches over and nudges Dean’s knee.

“Anyway,” Dean says, sits up in time to see a cat, black, dart between the Impala and the last cars of the train. It disappears into the brush on the side of the road. “All these containers they use now, intermodal and all, not many boxcars left to hop.” He draws three X’s on the windshield with his finger, then puts the Impala in gear.

“Thank God,” Sam says. “We’re saved.”

“Bite me.”  
____

One of the times Dean jumped a train was the only time he’d ever tried to run away. He was fourteen and he didn’t get far. He left Dad and Sam in a motel room somewhere in Oregon before dawn, slipping out of bed in the dark, untangling himself from Sam, all scrawny arms and legs then, and more comfortable invading his brother’s space. John had recently returned from a hunt and was not long for leaving again, with or without his sons Dean didn’t know.

He walked at first, north, nothing but the bag on his shoulder and the clothes on his back and no mind for trains until the path he was on opened onto tracks. A freight train crept along outside of a switching station, and not far from him, an open boxcar. He trotted along and pulled himself up, belly on the floor until he could get his legs beneath him and stand. Easier than he expected. But when his eyes adjusted to the halflight he found that he was not alone. Two men stood opposite him, one of them smiling, white eyes and teeth amidst dirty faces. A few others leaned against a bulkhead, silent and still, but something told him not for long. The train shuddered. The pistol was heavy in his bag and he considered it. Then he didn’t. Then his feet hit the ground and by the time he was back at the motel it was only lunch and John still slept. Sam sat at the little kitchenette, looking worried, asked where he’d been, how he’d gotten so dirty, why Dean hadn't woken him up and taken him too.  
____

“How’s your shoulder?” Dean asks, sits Sam down on the bed, waits for him to pull his shirt over his head.

“Good, I think,” Sam says, tries to see but can’t.

“You don’t bend that way, genius.”

“Yeah,” Sam says.

Dean inspects the wound, feels for heat, leans in and sniffs and Sam makes an “ew” noise.

“You’ll live,” Dean declares, claps Sam on the back of the neck and finds it cooler than he expected it to be. His hand lingers. “You’re sticky,” Dean says when he takes his hand away.

“What?” Sam asks.

Dean steps across the room. “I’ll redress it when you’re out of the shower.”

“Does that mean I get to shower first?” Sam seems hopeful.

“Not a chance, bro.”  
____

An old man overhears them talking about local hauntings in a diner in Screven. He says he can show them someplace if they’re interested. He’s sitting in the next booth, behind Dean so that Dean has to sit sideways to talk to him and eventually he sits with them, smaller than either brother, dressed in ill-fitting coveralls.

“It’s my house that’s haunted. Well, my daddy’s house anyhow. I didn’t live there always, more now than used to. My sister’s there too. Only she ain’t livin’ there if you take my meanin’. Lost her in fifty-eight. Wasn’t but twelve. My daddy killed her with his huntin’ rifle. Can’t say why and he ain’t goin’ to neither. He come for me but I wrestled that rifle away and that’s how come I’m settin’ here and he’s rotted in the ground. But I see my sister sometimes. Just as pretty and young. I see her other places too but mostly there. I’ve tried quittin’ that place, gone all over trying to settle. But ever where I go I always come back. Got so I’m used to it, I guess. Can’t say I ever thought I could be.”

The house is a crooked once-white two-story down a long dirt road that winds and intersects with other dirt roads, unmarked, and Dean keeps a map in his mind for the way out. The old man walks them through the house, shows them where he’s seen her before and tells them stories about each room. Shows them a dark spot in the upstairs hall floor, wood gone almost black, and he says that might be where his daddy shot his sister, or it might be somewhat he spilt, he can’t remember. He offers them beds if they’re curious enough. He’s sure she’ll show up.

Sam makes their excuses and the man is a small figure in the yellow glow of the porchlight when Dean waves as they’re pulling out of his drive. Without the old man’s taillights to follow, the drive back to the highway is the darkest night Dean’s ever seen, the road carved through pines that would block the moonlight if there was any, nothing to reflect the Impala’s twin beams but the worn road low in front of them. The thin strip of stars visible overhead is a small comfort.

“Creepy I’ll give him,” Sam says, “but there’s no way that place is haunted.”

Dean’s quiet, then, “some people make their own ghosts, I guess.”  
____

It rains every day, every afternoon. The rain washes the mixture of dirt and clay from their hands as they back-fill a grave, hits the backs of their necks, runs cold to mix with sweat. Dean lifts his face, looks at the grey clouds, rain hits his cheeks, lips, taps hollow against his leather jacket.

“Good thing we got the pyrotechnics over before this shit hit,” he says to Sam who’s unsticking his shoes from a mudslide.

“Be better if we could get this over too, Dean,” Sam says.

“Rain’ll move the rest of it, Sammy. Let’s get goin’.”

“A little more. She’s only half buried.”

“All right, but I call shotgun on the shower.”

“How is it you always get to shower first?” Now Sam’s the one leaning on his shovel, catching his breath and rain in his mouth. “Cause you’re older?”

“Naw, it’s cause I’m awesomer.”

“You really think this will make a difference?” Sam asks, back at work and nodding toward the charred box a few feet below the mud.

Dean shrugs. “I don’t know. He can’t let her go, maybe she can’t either. Maybe she isn’t haunting him at all. Maybe it just makes me feel warm and fuzzy.”

“Funny if he misses her more now,” Sams says when they’re in the car, handing Dean a relatively clean and dry towel, using a corner to wipe a smudge from Dean’s neck, and Dean feels the mud scratch against his skin, the slick of the clay. He takes the towel from Sam.

“Yeah,” he says, “not really.”  
____

They’re supposed to be in Macon but Dean’s not really sure where they are. They were on foot, chasing what they thought was a black dog into a pine forest until they got separated, turned around, and after a few rounds of Marco Polo, finally find each other again.

By the time they make their way out of the woods it’s pitch dark and they don’t recognize any of what little they can see. Five-strand barbed wire glints in the partial moonlight. Ahead of them, maybe an eighth of a mile, houselights wink. Further, headlights pass.

Dean holds down a strand of wire with his foot, pulls up another with his hand so that Sam can duck through, and Sam does the same for Dean once he’s on the other side. They head for the road. From a dense clump of trees that block the moon, a white shape floats toward them, heavy footfalls in the grass and they both stop for a moment until they hear a swish and a snort. The horse is dark, facial markings glowing white. It approaches then stops, sniffs the air, blood and death. It shies, spins, takes off, bucking and farting. There are other horses but no more approach them. Some trot quickly away when the boys walk by, some are white and ghostly, eyes like silver dollars, some so black they can only be made out as a darker shape than the night that surrounds them.

Later, in the car, Sam falls asleep in the passenger seat, stretched out as long as he can manage, face toward the window, the rain running down it, and even after they’ve stopped and the motel vacancy sign flashes red and yellow over the wet hood, Dean sits in the driver’s seat for a long time, hands in his lap, trying to hear the body breathing next to him. Eventually, the rain stops.

“Sammy,” he says after a while.  
___

In Atlanta they deal with a tree deity, not like the scarecrow. This one lives inside the trees, the earth, sucks people underground, nourishes the grove with their bodies. He thinks they might have to start a forest fire until Bobby suggests some concoction that takes six days to ferment, has to be administered during a waxing moon, smells like a metric ton of ass, and works like a charm. It doesn’t kill the trees but the evil is gone and it’s the best insecticide Dean has ever encountered. He tucks the recipe inside their dad’s journal, his journal now, really, though he only writes in it when Sam is sleeping or out picking up supplies. His first entry reads: Dear Diary, I started my period today. I hope my boobs start to get bigger soon!

His latest entry reads: Evil trees defeated. Tired as all hell. Used to wonder what it was like to be dad. Wonder now what it might have been like to not.  
___

At a gas station off of I-75, Dean sits in the passenger seat singing “Magic Man” in a halfhearted, sleepy falsetto and Sam pumps gas, not quite bobbing his head in time.

On the road again, nothing to do but read the billboards, Dean tells Sam about the train in Oregon. He doesn’t know why and Sam, alternately watching his brother and the road with equal confusion, seems genuinely surprised.

“What, you never thought I had it in me?” Dean asks.

Sam shakes his head, shrugs, doesn’t look at Dean for the rest of the ride. “I never thought you wanted to.”

Sam seems too large suddenly, or Dean feels small, pressed against the passenger door. He almost says, “I would have come back for you, Sammy,” but he puts his head against the glass of the window instead and watches the ground slip away beneath them.  
___

That night, in what Dean’s sure is the shittiest motel in Georgia, they share a bed like they used to, only not because they’re back to back and though he can feel Sam awake, the weight behind him is unmoving, accusatory, he thinks. There’s a bar next door but the lights have long stopped flashing and when he rolls onto his back the darkness sits heavy on his chest. There are shapes in the black.

“What?” Sam asks.

“I came back, Sammy.”

“I know.”

Dean shifts onto his side, reaches. Sam’s shoulder is cold in the dark. “You have to, too.”

___

A few days later they’re back in Statesboro. No haunting. No monster. But Dean remembered how Sam seemed to perk up in the college atmosphere. He made up something about a girl, that’s why they go there, backtracking. Sam doesn’t mention it when Dean doesn’t go off with anyone or anywhere.  
___

They stand close in the motel room they share, neither speaking, face warming face, and breath necks.

“Sammy,” Dean says low, broken.

Sam shifts, covers his brother’s mouth with his own.

Dean is surprised at first that it actually happens, even if he's not surprised at all that he lets it, but Sam follows him when he jerks, steps back, Sam’s hands on his neck, jaw, and then there is a wall behind him.

“We can’t” Dean says, but he knows they can and Sam says so. Then his brother’s hands are lifting his shirt, flat palms rough on sides, back, and Dean notices that Sam needs to trim his nails.

The back of Dean’s head thuds against the wall.

“Dean,” Sam says, admonishing, pulls Dean away from the hard surface. Dean avoids the bed until Sam’s mouth is on his neck again, doing things he’s sure he’s not supposed to know his little brother can do, and suddenly he’s lying on his back, Sam above him, Sam’s hands on his belt buckle. So he squirms, shimmies out of Sam's reach, wiggles down between straddling legs, the denim-clad columns of Sam’s thighs, until his own legs dangle off of the bed. Sam makes a confused noise, tries to move away until Dean stops him, pulls him back down, a hand behind the knee.

“Dean,” Sam says again, but Dean’s attention is on button, zipper. He tugs, pulls, hands on Sam’s ass, Sam in his mouth. He lifts, too, to meet Sam and Sam sinks lower, knees spread wider and says, “oh God, Dean.”

When Sam finally does roll off of him he reaches for Dean but Dean is already up and moving and he barely catches Dean’s hand. “Where are you going?”

Dean doesn’t look at him. He’s not sure that he can. Pretty sure he shouldn’t, not with this ache in his heart, his stomach, and the taste of Sam in his mouth. “I got this,” he says, and tries to tug his hand away.

“The hell you do,” Sam says, pulls Dean onto the bed with the weight of his own body as he falls back, Dean with him, rolls them over and pins his big brother.

“Don’t, Sammy,” Dean says. He’s looking at Sam’s hands between them, hands bigger than his own, not a kid’s anymore.

Sam crawls down, forcing Dean to look at him or look away.

Dean doesn’t look away and he keeps a hand on Sam’s shoulder, then in his hair. Sam goes slow at first, then slower, until Dean says he’s never had anything better.  
___

They shower separately, share a bed, and in the middle of the night Sam says Dean’s name and Dean says “yeah?” into the darkness.

“We can go back. If you want,” Sam says, “like it never happened.”

Dean moves in the bed. There’s a stripe of light falling over the blanket, spilling in through the window from the parking lot. It moves with him in waves across the sheets, toward Sam. “I can’t,” he says.

“Me neither.”  
___

At breakfast, before they hit the road, Dean asks Sam if he remembers the bike.

“It was a piece of shit.”

“Yeah it was,” Dean agreed, “didn’t get you far, did it?” He gestures with open hands, syrupy fork in one. “Still stuck with me.”

Sam furrows his brow, tilts his head in confusion. “The only reason I got that bike, Dean, was because I thought you’d think it was cool.”

Dean stops chewing. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, smiles.

Dean’s quiet at first, then says “hunh,” and shrugs it off, but there’s a smile on his face when he tucks back into his breakfast. He orders a slice of pie before they go and even offers to share but Sam hates cherries and says so.  
____

In South Carolina, Sam knows about a lake and tells Dean how to get there even though Dean insists he already knows. The water is dark, cool, and the bugs aren’t so bad once they’re away from the banks.

At sunset they start wading toward the shore and Sam calls driver, takes off, running naked in the brackish water, laughing.

“You better keep your wet ass off my upholstery,” Dean shouts, but he’s laughing too and he’s in no hurry.


End file.
